


You Feel the Fire Burning Sweet

by swords (zombiejosette)



Category: Dark Shadows (1966), Dark Shadows - All Media Types, Twin Peaks
Genre: F/M, what are you gonna do about it, yeah i made a twin peaks au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-25
Updated: 2013-04-25
Packaged: 2017-12-09 11:04:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/773484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zombiejosette/pseuds/swords
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Quentin/Victoria | Twin Peaks AU) He says, “Are you the one looking through our closets? Taking inventory of our skeletons?”</p>
<p>She sips her coffee and takes a breath and responds, “Just one.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Feel the Fire Burning Sweet

**i.**  
He saunters in and he’s too late for breakfast, but so is she, sitting at the head of the dining room table, hair tied back and she reaches for her coffee cup. Black, Quentin predicts, as he walks further into the room, and it’s not so much a shot to his ego as it is a note filed away for later when her face twists into a grimace.

She reaches out a single hand for the bowl of sugar, but Quentin’s quicker. He turns it away from her as she looks up, giving him the first glance of the face that dark hair frames. A surprised frown, eyebrows drawn together, and green, green eyes that seem so out of place in a gray little town like this one.

(Later, he’ll muse that it does not rain where she’s from; that’s why she shines so brightly, that’s why he needs to go with her.)

“They didn’t tell me we were having guests,” Quentin says. Drawls, almost, smooth and easy - and it’s the truth he speaks, but everybody knows. They don’t refer to her by name, only as the small girl with the bright smile and the suitcase, the one with the quiet tones and feet headed for the house on the cliff (but why would she ever go there? They wonder it with a mask of concern when it’s only gossip they’re after). “Mind if I sit down?”

Her head tilts and she lets out a hum of a laugh as she shakes her head, replying, “You do live here, don’t you?” And there’s a moment of hesitation between the both of them before she adds, “Quentin Collins. Missus Stoddard mentioned I might meet you.”

She makes no other comment and his hand finally leaves the sugar bowl as he slides the chair out next to her, slipping into it, pushing the sweetener in her direction. She nods in thanks and he swears those green eyes are coy under her eyelashes, swears she blushes and she’s flustered when she says, “I’m Victoria Winters.”

He says, “Are you the one looking through our closets? Taking inventory of our skeletons?”

She sips her coffee and takes a breath and responds, “Just one.”

**ii.**  
The letter-opener isn’t ideal. It won’t kill but it’s sharp enough to wound, and in silhouette, her hand must not shake, as she hears whoever it is scurry to the side of the bed - her bed - and she hears the lamp on her nightstand move before the yellow light fills the room and Victoria squints, instinct making her feet double back.

“Quentin,” is all she says, word formed out of worry and adrenaline but reading only relief. He sits there, sheets in a messy fold around his waist, and the grin on his face is forced and she swears she sees it falter.

“After I went through all this work,” he says, shake of his head. The dark mop of curls on his head are tangled. “I wanted to surprise you.”

( _I did this for you. You can help me run._ )

“I -” Victoria’s voice catches in her throat and she can only stare. The key was stolen, but it sits nicely on her nightstand. Never once taking her eyes from Quentin, she reaches forward to grab it, and she pockets it.

“You want me to leave,” he finishes for her.

She says nothing for a moment, eyes ripping away from him to scan the room. The bed’s the only thing disturbed, a mess of rumpled sheets. He waits for her response, and Victoria can do nothing but shake her head and stare at him, stare at the boy in her bed, all smirks and sly eyes, smooth words - straight backed to seem taller and older than he really is.

She kneels and fetches his pants from the floor, handing them over to him. “I want you to get dressed,” she tells him decisively, and she prays the resolve shows on her face. The pause before he takes them from her is too long, the grip of Quentin’s hand in the fabric too loose. His hand doesn’t shake but she imagines it’s cold. She turns her back and hears him slide from the mattress, hears his feet hit the ground, hears the fabric rustle.

“I won’t tell Missus Stoddard,” she promises. She doesn’t look over her shoulder.

“A secret between us,” Quentin says, and she tries to ignore how delighted he sounds, how soft the tone is. “You’ll fit right in at Collinwood yet.” He peers over her shoulder and she tries not to revel in it, tries to ignore the warmth of him behind her and the curve of his mouth and she’s here for a reason, he was there for a reason, she can’t compromise it.

His smile is a substitute for an apology as he lets himself out.

**iii.**  
“Miss Winters.” Quentin’s knocking is loud and incessant and it wakes Victoria from her thoughts. “Miss Winters, I have something to tell you.”

“Quentin, I’m -” but he’s barreling through the door the instant she twists the doorknob, pushing on the wood to shut it behind her. 

“I have something to tell you.” He makes himself at home, sitting on her bed staring up at her and there’s something about the way his eyes widen, something about the grin he wears, something about the way his hands grip the edge of the mattress. Victoria takes a step back toward the wall, hands clasping behind her back.

“So you’ve said,” she replies, voice betraying her amusement. “What is it? What’s so important?”

“He was cheating on her. He was having an affair,” Quentin says. His smile seems to fade in slow motion, head lowers, eyes stay locked on hers. “Paul Stoddard.”

The happiness leaves the room through the crack under the door, through the pit in Victoria’s stomach. She says, “On Missus Stoddard?”

His nod is solemn. “Something about a child, too.”

He keeps his tone low and the silence weighs on them both and he finally looks away (though Victoria would swear it’s to hide the pride, that longing for her approval, the spilling of a secret, that makes his blue eyes shimmer). Her lips part and she sighs and she shakes her head and, “I understand,” but she doesn’t, not when the confession won’t come easy but the suspicion will, when it was right in front of her, overtop of her, Elizabeth looming all the while.

**iv.**  
The curtains are red and heavy and for a moment, Victoria thinks she’s in the drawing room. She even hears the grandfather clock ticking in the distance, keeping time like a metronome, like the snapping of fingers. But the floor is cold under her feet and it changes, black, white, black, white, _red_ when she moves her hands and the blood drips down her hands like rain.

Quentin lies in the center of the room, red along his neck and mouth as he sits up and he glares and his eyes are narrow and yellow, she swears, teeth bared and hair a mess and he’s Burke. 

Burke is a mess, slashed along his face, body little more than that of a rag doll. He twists his neck toward her and she can hear the bones, hear the cracks, the fractures. Victoria runs toward him but her knees buckle; she steadies herself before she can fall, but there’s more blood on the ground.

A hiss of her last name and it’s Quentin’s body that falls to the ground, a tangled mess of limbs, coat too large and clothing too old.

“I’ll let him live if you stay.” The woman is blonde and her eyes glow, shimmering and sultry and a stark contrast of blue to the red surrounding them. Victoria doesn’t know her. They turn their heads in time, eyes landing on Quentin, and when Victoria turns her head again, it’s Elizabeth who stands before her. Elizabeth, chin held high and a queen with no crown. She reaches forward and Victoria, for all of her bravery (though it is not so much that as absence of fear), Victoria is wounded and takes a step back.

“I’ll let him live.”

Paul Stoddard stands behind her now, a blur in the distance but behind her all the same. It’s bait and it works and Victoria reaches her hand out, all but calling out for him, for her _father_ , but the woman and her curls of gold stand there again, blocking him from her as she reaches out with a slim hand.

A ring of fire surrounds them and Victoria does not feel the flames.


End file.
